Psychology
as we know it is a relatively young science, but since its inception it
has helped us to gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our
interactions with the world. Many psychological experiments have been
valid and ethical, allowing researchers to make new treatments and
therapies available, and giving other insights into our motivations and
actions. Sadly, others have ended up backfiring horribly — ruining lives
and shaming the profession. Here are ten psychological experiments that
spiraled out of control.
10. Stanford Prison Experiment
Prisoners and guards
In
1971, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo set out to interrogate the
ways in which people conform to social roles, using a group of male
college students to take part in a two-week-long experiment in which
they would live as prisoners and guards in a mock prison. However,
having selected his test subjects, Zimbardo assigned them their roles
without their knowledge, unexpectedly arresting the "prisoners" outside
their own homes. The results were disturbing. Ordinary college students
turned into viciously sadistic guards or spineless (and increasingly
distraught) prisoners, becoming deeply enmeshed within the roles they
were playing. After just six days, the distressing reality of this
"prison" forced Zimbardo to prematurely end the experiment.
9. The Monster Study
Wendell Johnson, of the University of Iowa, who was behind the study
In
this study, conducted in 1939, 22 orphaned children, 10 with stutters,
were separated equally into two groups: one with a speech therapist who
conducted "positive" therapy by praising the children’s progress and
fluency of speech; the other with a speech therapist who openly
chastised the children for the slightest mistake. The results showed
that the children who had received negative responses were badly
affected in terms of their psychological health. Yet more bad news was
to come as it was later revealed that some of the children who had
previously been unaffected developed speech problems following the
experiment. In 2007, six of the orphan children were awarded $925,000 in
compensation for emotional damage that the six-month-study had left
them with.
8. MK-ULTRA
Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, also seen top
The
CIA performed many unethical experiments into mind control and
psychology under the banner of project MK-ULTRA during the 50s and 60s.
Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, is reported to
have been a test subject in the CIA's disturbing experiments, which may
have contributed to his mental instability. In another case, the
administration of LSD to US Army biological weapons expert Frank Olson
is thought to have sparked a crisis of conscience, inspiring him to tell
the world about his research. Instead, Olson is said to have committed
suicide, jumping from a thirteenth-story hotel room window, although
there is strong evidence that he was murdered. This doesn't even touch
on the long-term psychological damage other test subjects are likely to
have suffered.
7. Elephant on LSD
In
1962, Warren Thomas, the director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City,
injected an elephant named Tusko with 3,000 times the typical human
dose of LSD. It was an attempt to make his mark on the scientific
community by determining whether the drug could induce "musth" — the
aggressiveness and high hormone levels that male elephants experience
periodically. The only contribution Thomas made was to create a public
relations disaster as Tusko died almost immediately after collapsing and
going into convulsions.
6. Milgram Experiment
The Milgram Experiment underway
In
1963, in the wake of the atrocities of the Holocaust, Stanley Milgram
set out to test the hypothesis that there was something special about
the German people that had allowed them to participate in genocide.
Under the pretense of an experiment into human learning, Milgram asked
normal members of the public to ask questions to a man attached to an
electric-shock generator and shock him in increasing measure when he
answered incorrectly. The man was an actor, the shocks fake; but the
participants didn’t know this. The terrifying part? People
overwhelmingly obeyed the commands of the experimenter, even when the
man screamed in apparent agony and begged for mercy. A little evil in
all of us, perhaps?
5. Tony LaMadrid
Many
medicated schizophrenics enrolled in a University of California study
that required them to stop taking their medication in a program that
started in 1983. The study was meant to give information that would
allow doctors to better treat schizophrenia, but rather it messed up the
lives of many of the test subjects, 90% of whom relapsed into episodes
of mental illness. One participant, Tony LaMadrid, leaped to his death
from a rooftop six years after first enrolling in the study.
4. Pit of Despair
A rhesus monkey infant in one of Harlow's isolation chambers
Psychologist
Harry Harlow was obsessed with the concept of love, but rather than
writing poems or love songs, he performed sick, twisted experiments on
monkeys during the 1970s. One of his experiments revolved around
confining the monkeys in total isolation in an apparatus he called the
"well of despair” (a featureless, empty chamber depriving the animal of
any stimulus or socialization) — which resulted in his subjects going
insane and even starving themselves to death in two cases. Harlow
ignored the criticism of his colleagues, and is quoted as saying, “How
could you love monkeys?” The last laugh was on him, however, as his
horrific treatment of his subjects is acknowledged as being a driving
force behind the development of the animal rights movement and the end
of such cruel experiments.
3. The Third Wave
Running
along a similar theme similar to the Milgram experiment, The Third
Wave, carried out in 1967, was an experiment that set out to explore the
ways in which even democratic societies can become infiltrated by the
appeal of fascism. Using a class of high school students, the
experimenter created a system whereby some students were considered
members of a prestigious order. The students showed increased motivation
to learn, yet, more worryingly, became eager to get on board with
malevolent practices, such as excluding and ostracizing non-members from
the class. Even more scarily, this behavior was gleefully continued
outside of the classroom. After just four days, the experiment was
considered to be slipping out of control and was ceased.
2. Homosexual Aversion Therapy
In
the 1960s homosexuality was frequently depicted as a mental illness,
with many individuals seeking (voluntarily or otherwise) a way to "cure"
themselves of their sexual attraction to members of the same sex.
Experimental therapies at the time included aversion therapy — where
homosexual images were paired with such things as electric shocks and
injections that caused vomiting. The thought was that the patient would
associate pain with homosexuality. Rather than "curing" homosexuality,
these experiments profoundly psychologically damaged the patients, with
at least one man dying from the “treatment” he received, after he went
into a coma.
1. David Reimer
David Reimer
In
1966, when David Reimer was 8 months old, his circumcision was botched
and he lost his penis to burns. Psychologist John Money suggested that
baby David be given a sex change. The parents agreed, but what they
didn’t know was that Money secretly wanted to use David as part of an
experiment to prove his views that gender identity was not inborn, but
rather determined by nature and upbringing. David was renamed Brenda,
surgically altered to have a vagina, and given hormonal supplements —
but tragically the experiment backfired. "Brenda" acted like a
stereotypical boy throughout childhood, and the Reimer family began to
fall apart. At 14, Brenda was told the truth, and decided to go back to
being David. He committed suicide at the age of 38.
